Uropathogenic E. coli (UPEC) is problematic and still the leading cause of urinary tract infections worldwide. It is developed resistance against most antibiotics. The investigation, surveillance system, and efficient strategy will facilitate selecting an appropriate treatment that could control the bacterial distribution. The present study aims to investigate the epidemiology and associated risk factors of uropathogenic E. coli and to study their antibiotic resistance patterns. 1585 midstream urine specimens were collected from symptomatic urinary tract infections (UTI) patients (225 males and 1360 females) admitted to Zakho emergency hospital, Zakho, Kurdistan Region, Iraq from January 2016 until the end of December 2018. Specimens were inoculated on blood and MacConkey plates and incubated at 37оC for 24 hours. Uropathogenic E. coli was diagnosed based on gram staining, colony characteristics, and standard biochemical tests in accordance with local standards and guidelines. All isolates were screened for their antibiogram pattern using the disk diffusion method based on the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute guidelines. The results showed that out of 1585 urine specimens, 1026 (64.7%) were UTIs positive with a statistically higher rate in 2016 (83.6%) (P< 0.0001). The UTIs frequency in females was significantly higher than males (P< 0.0001). Generally, the uropathogenic E. coli represented 21.1% with the highest level in 2016 (22.9%). The uropathogenic E. coli rate was higher, statistically not significant, in females (21.4%) than males (18.5%) (P=0.4946). Additionally, through the three years of study, uropathogenic E. coli (UPEC) was in high frequency in February and May 2016. The female’s age group from 20 to 39 years was the most vulnerable (46%) form total infected females, while those from 70-74 years (1%) were the least susceptible in males and females. A high percentage (80.56 %) of multidrug resistance E. coli isolates was observed with high resistance against -lactamase and macrolides antibiotics. However, higher sensitivity was towards imipenem and meropenem. In conclusion, the wrong and overuse of antibiotics will increase the resistance rate of E. coli. For this reason, proper use of available antibiotics is necessary. Also, the educational programs and periodic monitoring of antimicrobial susceptibility are essential for reducing the antibiotic resistance rate.
Luminescent solar concentrator (LSC) are used to enhance photoresponsivity of solar cell. The Quantumdots luminescent solar concentrator (QDLSC) consists of CdSe/CdS core/shell nanoparticles embedded in polyacrylamide polymer matrix positioned on the top surface of the silicon solar cell. This procedure improves the conversion efficiency of the bare silicon solar cell. The conversion efficiency of the solar cell has increased from 7.3% to 10.3%. this improvement is referred to the widening of the response spectral region window of the a- Si. Solar cell.
A two time step stochastic multi-variables multi-sites hydrological data forecasting model was developed and verified using a case study. The philosophy of this model is to use the cross-variables correlations, cross-sites correlations and the two steps time lag correlations simultaneously, for estimating the parameters of the model which then are modified using the mutation process of the genetic algorithm optimization model. The objective function that to be minimized is the Akiake test value. The case study is of four variables and three sites. The variables are the monthly air temperature, humidity, precipitation, and evaporation; the sites are Sulaimania, Chwarta, and Penjwin, which are located north Iraq. The model performance was
... Show MoreThe marshes are one of the important environmental features affecting human and animal systems, so the studying of changes they undergo is one of the important topics. This study is concerned with the changes occurring in the Al Saadya marsh for the period from 1987 to 2017 exclusively in the winter season (the marshes’ revival season in Iraq revive). In order to inspect the changes in this marsh, we choose 7 years to cover the study period as a criterion years, namely 1987, 1990, 1995, 2000, 2007, 2014 and 2017. The “Maximum Likelihood” classifier was used to separate the stacked land cover features, where the minimum overall accuracy ratio that recorded for all years of study was 96%. The results revealed that Al-Saadya marsh went t
... Show MoreThis study employs evolutionary optimization and Artificial Intelligence algorithms to determine an individual’s age using a single-faced image as the basis for the identification process. Additionally, we used the WIKI dataset, widely considered the most comprehensive collection of facial images to date, including descriptions of age and gender attributes. However, estimating age from facial images is a recent topic of study, even though much research has been undertaken on establishing chronological age from facial photographs. Retrained artificial neural networks are used for classification after applying reprocessing and optimization techniques to achieve this goal. It is possible that the difficulty of determining age could be reduce
... Show MoreBreast cancer constitutes about one fourth of the registered cancer cases among the Iraqi population (1)
and it is the leading cause of death among Iraqi women (2)
. Each year more women are exposed to the vicious
ramifications of this disease which include death if left unmanaged or the negative sequels that they would
experience, cosmetically and psychologically, after exposure to radical mastectomy.
The World Health Organization (WHO) documented that early detection and screening, when coped
with adequate therapy, could offer a reduction in breast cancer mortality; displaying that the low survival rates
in less developed countries, including Iraq, is mainly attributed to the lack of early detection programs couple
This paper focuses on developing a self-starting numerical approach that can be used for direct integration of higher-order initial value problems of Ordinary Differential Equations. The method is derived from power series approximation with the resulting equations discretized at the selected grid and off-grid points. The method is applied in a block-by-block approach as a numerical integrator of higher-order initial value problems. The basic properties of the block method are investigated to authenticate its performance and then implemented with some tested experiments to validate the accuracy and convergence of the method.
The virtual decomposition control (VDC) is an efficient tool suitable to deal with the full-dynamics-based control problem of complex robots. However, the regressor-based adaptive control used by VDC to control every subsystem and to estimate the unknown parameters demands specific knowledge about the system physics. Therefore, in this paper, we focus on reorganizing the equation of the VDC for a serial chain manipulator using the adaptive function approximation technique (FAT) without needing specific system physics. The dynamic matrices of the dynamic equation of every subsystem (e.g. link and joint) are approximated by orthogonal functions due to the minimum approximation errors produced. The contr
In this paper, experimental study has been done for temperature distribution in space conditioned with Ventilation Hollow Core Slab (TermoDeck) system. The experiments were carried out on a model room with dimensions of (1m 1.2m 1m) that was built according to a suitable scale factor of (1/4). The temperature distributions was measured by 59 thermocouples fixed in several locations in the test room. Two cases were considered in this work, the first one during unoccupied period at night time (without external load) and the other at day period with external load of 800W/m2 according to solar heat gain calculations during summer season in Iraq. All results confirm the use of TermoDeck system for ventilation and cooling/heat
... Show MoreThe researcher studied transportation problem because it's great importance in the country's economy. This paper which ware studied several ways to find a solution closely to the optimization, has applied these methods to the practical reality by taking one oil derivatives which is benzene product, where the first purpose of this study is, how we can reduce the total costs of transportation for product of petrol from warehouses in the province of Baghdad, to some stations in the Karsh district and Rusafa in the same province. Secondly, how can we address the Domandes of each station by required quantity which is depending on absorptive capacity of the warehouses (quantities supply), And through r
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